Prizm 5.1 Neoxpixel install fails, weird beep sound and then nothing happens.

PS, another thought about the weird behavior: I use 24 or 26 ga wire on the strips to carry the amps. If you're using too thin of a wire gauge, the full power needed isn't reaching the strips, that can cause unusual behavior too. To test this, with the prism on, measure voltage coming out of prism with multimeter. Then measure voltage the first pads of your strips. Then measure voltage at the tip end of your strips. They should all be relatively close, and if not, you're losing juice somewhere (like in thin wires).

Check all 3 connections at board and on strips (positive, negative, and data) for good connections. Flow them again, make sure that the joints are shiny after you hit them. Cold solder joints can cause weird behavior. If you have assorted resistors lying around, you can try different resistors on the data line. I have found great success using 470 ohm, but have heard of people running anywhere from 100-500, and a few that don't use data line resistors at all (I wouldn't do that).

PS, thin gauge wire is fine for the data line, but not for the power and return to the strips.

Tom

I have now built 20 or so neopixel blades, so I know the frustration. Seem to me you have total crap strips. Get the Adafruit if this is your personal saber, and you want to stop throwing money away. However, you can find better vendors. I'm paying 18-20 bucks a meter for most of my strips now, and 90% of the time, they work well; however, every now and then I get sent a meter or two that are either total crap that I have to throw away, or lots of crap where I have to cut out pixels in the middle of the strips, and rejoin, reflow each pixel connections and transistors. A bad strip can be a lot of work to fix for sure. The Adafruit strips work. If you have problems with them, then you can start looking at your wiring on the prism.

PS, is your data line bridge solid on the prism?

Tom

I was re checking your board photos. On your negatives to the neopixels you are running them all through only one of the pads. That is bad. You need to use at least 2 of those mosfets. You may have fried that one mosfet that both of your strips are connected to. Attach wires to the other two mosfets, the ones you haven't used already. Double strips need to divide their ampload across more mosfets. You might have hosed that single mosfet you were using.

The white flash upon boot up is normal. You can get rid of that by adding a capacitor to the stirps, but I don't. That white flash is no biggie.

Tom

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tom Tilmon

I was re checking your board photos. On your negatives to the neopixels you are running them all through only one of the pads. That is bad. You need to use at least 2 of those mosfets. You may have fried that one mosfet that both of your strips are connected to. Attach wires to the other two mosfets, the ones you haven't used already. Double strips need to divide their ampload across more mosfets. You might have hosed that single mosfet you were using.

The white flash upon boot up is normal. You can get rid of that by adding a capacitor to the stirps, but I don't. That white flash is no biggie.

Tom

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Uhm theres a second white wire on the first mosfet straight in the outer edge too, its just not to be seen on the photo, sry for this. I used 26 gauge wires for the connections. Dataline is a nice solid soldered connection, resoldered it for nice shiny joints. Thought about a capacitor too, do you think the colour behaviour could be solved by the capacitor too? I really guess its the strips..

No, once juice is flowing and the strips light up, that capacitor has 0 influence. It just doesn't allow that initial pulse to hit the blade when you pull the kill key. I think you have bad strips if you're running off both mosfets then.

well, today my adafruits arrived and unfortunately the issue still lasts on. I wired them up to a NBV4 of a friend of mine and nearly everthing worked fine. Also tried to use a brand new SD-Card to make sure it cant be that. So i guess i fried either the mosfet of the Dataline or the nearby resistorpads by soldering too long on them...

But there is one issue with the NBV4 i still cant handle. I tried various parameters for qon qoff between 100 and 500, lsfadeon and lsfadeoff are set to 1 while lightstick is 0 but still i get no ignition and retraction effect at all. The led strip lights up instantly and instantly shuts down as well.

did you change all the config settings for neopixels? Including how many are in your strip?

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Originally Posted by Tom Tilmon

did you change all the config settings for neopixels? Including how many are in your strip?

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Yes of course, 144 as they are on the strips themselves. Everything works fine, including any colourmixing, just ignition and retraction effect fails for no apparent reason

I'll get that occasionally if there is a stray short between data and ground. (on the strips and on both adpaters. Check microscopically for any errant wire threads crossing over).